In 1956 he bought a farmhouse in The Yorkshire Dales, which became his main home and studio for the rest of his life. Norman’s work in the late 1950’s is to do with discovering nature and The Yorkshire Dales.

In 1962 Norman accepted the position of head of painting at Manchester College of Art. In the beginning Norman was given a free hand to run the Art Department as he wanted. It was seen as failing, and Norman was employed to turn it around. He hired many painters part time and took an interest in their work. He made a habit of visiting the studios of his staff. Soon the art school was full with enthusiastic painters. At this time that Manchester Art College became known as The Spiritualist School.

Norman’s work in the 1960’s became more abstract, and the religious aspect of his work became more pronounced. Many of his paintings from this time have passages from the bible.

In 1970 he resigned from his teaching position in Manchester. He objected very strongly to the incorporation of Art Schools into Polytechnics. He felt that an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy was being imposed in the name of ‘good’ management. Norman objected to people spending more time justifying what they did than actually doing it. If Norman was not talking to students he was painting.

Norman Adams

Norman was born in Walthamstow on 9th March 1927, the son of working class parents. His art education began at the age of 13, when he started at junior art school, Harrow School of Art. From this time his education was a training to become a painter.

There were two closely related aspects to Norman’s professional life. The first was painting. His talent and his education meant that there was very little else of concequence that he could have done. He was also a very dedicated teacher, feeling strongly that it was essential to help young people become artists.

In 1948 he was called and, as a conscientious objector served a short spell in Wormwood Scrubs, followed by 18 months working on a pig farm in Acton. His motivation behind this was both a strong pacifist influence from his girlfriend, Anna, and a belief that Art is international. He once asked ‘What would I have done if they had asked me to kill Nolde? During this time he was a week-end painter, working mainly in egg tempera.

In 1947 he married Anna Butt. In 1948 he started as a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Art. After this he fell on his feet. He designed sets and costumes for the Royal Ballet, had his first solo show at Gimpel Fills in 1952, and in 1952 painted a mural for Board Road Comprehensive School in Coventry.

During the 1970’s Norman continued to paint larger works in his studio and water colours outside. Much of Norman’s work from this decade was painted on the Hebridean island of Scarp, off the Atlantic coast of Harris. In 1969 Norman bought a crofters bungalow on what was soon to become, apart for summer visitors, an uninhabited island. Every summer and Easter Norman drove, with his family, from Yorkshire to Scarp. The result is the ‘Scarp’ watercolours that typify that decade.

At the end of the 1970’s Norman developed angina, and feeling that Scarp was not the place to have a heart attack. They sold their small house and never went to Scarp again. Instead, they took to spending their summers in Provence. Norman’s work in the 1980’s is clearly inspired both by the sun and colourful landscape, but also strongly influenced by Van Gogh. I remember his describing how he had to change his watercolour technique because of the hot dry air. On one occasion he described how when he was painting in an olive grove a family stood behind him and watched. He quite liked an audience when painting. At one stage he picked up his water jar and poured water over his partly completed work to a sharp intake of air from the family.

In the last years of his life Norman developed Parkinson’s disease and could no longer cope with the physical work of painting with oil. He still had a head full and visual images and worked on large watercolours.